Clinton Aides Deny Improper Actions

No Whitewater Documents Were Hidden, They Say

January 17, 1996|The New York Times and Information from The Los Angeles Times was used to supplement this report.

WASHINGTON - — Three White House officials, pressed to explain the notes of a 1993 strategy meeting, insisted on Tuesday that they conducted themselves properly and never sought to hide documents from Whitewater investigators.

Republicans on the Senate Whitewater Committee have characterized the Nov. 5, 1993, meeting as part of a secret effort by the White House to improperly gather information about inquiries being conducted by other agencies.

The Republicans also said it was a planning session that led to the destruction of sensitive papers involving the Whitewater land deal.

"There was absolutely no discussion at this meeting of anyone destroying any files," testified William Kennedy III, a former associate White House counsel who attended the meeting. He said the lawyers at the meeting, some of whom had been federal prosecutors earlier in their careers, "absolutely would not have tolerated" any illegal or improper plan to impede investigators.

Kennedy was once a partner of Hillary Rodham Clinton at the Rose Law Firm in Little Rock, Ark., and has since returned to the firm. The other witnesses at Tuesday's hearing were W. Neil Eggleston, also a former associate White House counsel, and Bruce Lindsey, a senior adviser to President Clinton.

The witnesses said the two-hour meeting at the Washington law firm of Williams & Connolly, which represents the Clintons, was intended to brief a new lawyer who was to head the team at the firm doing an array of legal work for the Clintons.

The witnesses also said they had discussed legal and political strategies for dealing with Whitewater.

The meeting is described in notes taken by Kennedy and released last month after a protracted fight between the Senate and the White House.

The witnesses, and their Democratic supporters on the committee, said repeatedly that nothing improper occurred at the meeting.

In their questioning, Republicans focused on the notes of the meeting and phrases such as "Vacuum Rose Law Files WWDC Docs-subpoena."

Kennedy rejected suggestions that the notation meant that the lawyers had discussed destroying or hiding records relating to Madison Guaranty Savings & Loan, a failed thrift for which Hillary Clinton had performed legal work. Madison was owned by James B. and Susan McDougal, partners with President Clinton and his wife in the Whitewater real estate project of the 1980s.

"I was referring to an informational vacuum," Kennedy testified. "The Rose law files relating to Whitewater were a shambles. ... There were no corporate minutes, no stock certificates, no corporate records. It was a mess."